The field of this invention is the preparation of alcohols by the two-step process of hydrogenating purified carbon to form a mixture of paraffins, and of oxidizing the paraffins to form their respective alcohols.
Alcohols have been proposed for use as motor fuels. Their primary advantage is that their exhaust products contain little or no pollutants, being substantially completely carbon dioxide and water. There is, however, no practical, large-scale process suitable for the preparation of alcohol that is competitive with the traditional sources of motor fuel. It is, therefore, the major objective of this invention to provide a process for the preparation of alcohols of sufficient quantity to be competitive with conventional petroleum-based motor fuels.
In the present process, alcohols are synthesized from coal, or another source of purified carbon. The purified carbon may be obtained from charcoal, coal or a vegetable carbon source, for example, by the process described in my patent application, Ser. No. 82,549, filed Oct. 20, 1970, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,689,233, entitled Process For The Manufacture Of Hard Ashless Charcoal Briquettes. Said purified carbon, as disclosed at column 4 lines 30-33 of said patent, is material which is substantially pure and ashless, comprising essentially 99.75 percent carbon. It is then a further objective to provide a process for the preparation of alcohols from a readily available source of carbon, such as coal.
The well-known Bergius process converted powdered coal and heavy oil to hydrocarbons, by catalytic hydrogenation. It is a further objective of this invention to provide an improved method of hydrogenating a carbon source, as well as to oxidize the resulting hydrocarbons to alcohols.